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A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. (p. 70)

— Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957)

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More quotes by Northrop Frye

Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Fables of Identity (1963)

The operations of the human mind are also controlled by words of power, formulas that become a focus of mental activity.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

The apocalypse is the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

The supremacy of the verbal over the monumental has something about it of the supremacy of life over death.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

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